Lived Experience Forum

[Oldm8]

Hi all

My dad passed away from a traumatic brain injury and Parkinson's disease a little over 5 years ago. It still gets hard particularly as he died the day before my birthday. It was not a fun 30th birthday. Every year around this time I seem to go through the same exhausting rollercoaster. We had a difficult relationship because from the time I was 13 he had strokes which when I was 14 resulted in him losing his job. He also got violent and impulsive. Then he got diagnosed with Parkinson's when I was in my final year of high school. To add to my woes when I was 14 my brother who was 6 at the time got sexually abused by a neighbour. I was also getting rather viciously bullied for much of high school. All this culminated in a few attempts at suicide one of which got me hospitalised. I then spent most of my first attempt at uni being socially isolated. I failed I have had crap jobs since and now am writing this back at uni doing almost ok this semester and hoping to get through a psychology degree so i can help. The problem is that right now I am really tired of trying whilst feeling alone and feeling like a burden. I am also really angry and dissapointed at myself for how aggressive I was to my Dad who spent half my life dying in front of my eyes. I have no idea how to live with the guilt. The more I look into it the more I look like the real bad guy. Help. It's past midnight here.

[Lunar]

Hello @Oldm8

The first thing I wanted to say is that you are defintely not the bad guy, it seems like you have gone through some really tough times and managed to cope with all of that, those were all things that you had no control over with your fathers brain injury and parkinsons as well as your brother being abused.

And yet you have still managed to study at univeristy and wanting to help others, that is wonderful and shows just how much care you have for other people.

I am so sorry to hear about your fathers passing, that must have been incredily hard to go through and I am sure you are still going through some grief with that loss, are you looking after yourself at the moment? Also, what kind of support do you have?

Glad you came to the forums for extra support right now, you definitely deserve that

Lunar 🙂

[Oldm8]

Thanks Lunar I went to sleep later on. Just have moments then you start really reliving it. Then you get into whatif's and the actual decision making about my Dad's passing. He had a whole series of TBI's then one day he fell out of his wheelchair at home. Then he had an SAH and a IVH and he couldn't talk anymore or respond to commands he couldn't even squeeze my hand when I begged him to. So we had a choice to keep him in an acute ward when we had already been told that they couldn't operate on him and he couldn't swallow food and put a gastric tube in. We decided not to. And we took him to a hospice instead. Then me and my Mum and sister and brother stayed with him until he died me and Mum basically living in his room. It was so much better than being in a public hospital ward. My baby niece at the time had a playground. It was just a much nicer environment. Sorry for the long post but I needed to get it off my chest. Thanks.